Page 61 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
“Did he have an alibi ten years ago?”
“You know he didn’t,” she replied slowly, watching Tom’s face. Guy was probably an ace poker player; he might be concerned about Dennis, concernedforDennis, or wonderingwhere the salt was. “You’ve read the file. He was out of town to check out some colleges, but nobody could put him at the U of M or anywhere else he said he’d been. Which isn’t proof, by the way.” She leaned forward. “He’s a goofball with a flair for drama who might be an alcoholic, but he didn’t kill his own twin. They weren’t alike at all, but he’d never have hurt her.”
“Try and call him,” he urged. “Right now.”
“Okay, rude, but…” She hated when people played with their phones in restaurants, but this could be a literal matter of life or death. Which she would tell the first person who tried to give her any side-eye. She hit his number and it went straight to voice mail. “Not there. Or not where his phone is. Or his phone is off.”Or he’s dead, killed by the guy who just can’t let this shit go.“Should I report him as a missing person? Or…” She shivered, but it had to be said. “… reach out to his mother?”
Tom shook his head. “It’s too soon. But it’s something else to think about. Wouldn’t you say? Identifying all the variables is always a positive.”
“Argh, science. You really can’t help yourself, can you?”
“I cannot,” he admitted, looking simultaneously stoic and embarrassed, which was quite a trick. “Has anything else happened since last night?”
“No. I haven’t gotten sick again, none of my belongings have disappeared, nobody fiddled with my last drug test. Except…”
“Tell me. Please.”
“Everyone seems to know all about it,” she explained. “Which was odd. The only people who should have been privy to the details were me, my union rep, HR, and my direct supervisor. But my crew had heard.”
“Not surprising, given the nature of the tampered drug test.”
“Sorry, what? Elaborate for the clueless layman, please.”
“That’s only half right,” he said, smiling. “I researched the test favored by that particular lab. Their protocols are exacting—”
“Well, yeah. The FAA’s like that. And they tend to be pretty detail-oriented. They wouldn’t farm that particular lab work out to amateurs.”
“Precisely. It would have been much easier for the killer/vandal to crack their server and change the numbers as opposed to sabotaging your urine.”
“Well, if there’s anything I hate, it’s people sabotaging my urine.”
“And if he or she can do that, perhaps they can hack into other servers. Or your company’s intranet.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Shit.”
“Quite.”
“I gotta think about what that means,” Ava said. “Right now, I’m thinking it’s nothing good.”
“And this is speculation on my part. I have no proof. And perhaps your union representative is a heartless gossip.” At Ava’s snort, he continued. “But I think you should proceed by assuming the killer has access to your e-mails and anything Ava-related on the company servers, and plan accordingly.”
“Fucking great.”
“And… may I ask an unrelated question?”
“Hit me.”
“I was researching the articles about your belly landing andgot to wondering… your fellow pilot’s aneurysm aside, how often do such things happen?” He leaned forward. “Statistically speaking, it’s bound to happen, if infrequently. But… how often? Not murder, perhaps, but a passenger succumbing to a myocardial infarction or the like and dying in the air?”
“Well, first, we don’t call it ‘dying in the air,’ because yikes, think of the other passengers. It’s classified as a ‘catastrophic incident.’ And besides the belly landing, it only happened twice on my shift, and only once when I was the pilot. Poor guy keeled over in First, total cliché: overweight business guy in a nice suit fretting about important meetings and refusing to put his laptop away.”
“But that’s insane. It could become a projectile.”
She nearly threw up her hands in victory. “Thank you! We’re nottryingto ruin their good time. It’s just we’re prejudiced against pesky details like a passenger getting beaned in the brain by a laptop going 150 miles an hour. Or not hearing the safety lecture because of their headphones, then losing their shit when there’s an emergency landing. ‘Wait,whogets the oxygen mask first? My dog?’”
